WORKERS dealing with toxic elements can get immediate warnings of dangerous leaks, thanks to an air monitoring device developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The monitor uses microwaves to turn sampled air into a hot plasma. The plasma emits light, which is fed to a detector that identifies pollutants by the wavelengths they emit. The concentrations of these pollutants are then read on a computer.
The monitor was developed to pick up beryllium, a toxic metal used in nuclear weapons manufacture. 鈥淲hen you work with beryllium today, you always deal with it after the fact,鈥� says Los Alamos metallurgist Steve Abeln鈥攂y analysing samples collected on filters.
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Tony Quinn, manager of the beryllium facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, says the monitor is an important advance, but adds that the 25-kilogram instrument is still too large to be very useful.